Self-reported sense of presence and responses to social stimuli by adolescents with autism spectrum disorder in a collaborative virtual reality environment

ABSTRACT

Background Collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) have the potential to support sociocommunicative interactions for people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but little is known about the sense of presence participants feel in CVEs or how CVEs can be used to assess skills.

Method Ten children with ASD and 10 typically developing (TD) children (aged 12–16 years) judged greeting behaviours of a human avatar and static facial expressions in a virtual gallery.

Results There were no differences in presence reported by the two groups. The ASD group was less sensitive to a negative greeting from the human avatar than the TD group, and impaired in recognising static facial expressions.

Conclusions Self-reported measures of presence are valuable for informing which kinds of tasks, and technology may provide more authentic contexts in which to identify and support social competence in participants with ASD.

KEYWORDS:

• autism
• technology
• virtual reality
• presence
• assessment
• collaborative virtual environment (CVE)

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the children who participated in this study and the teaching staff from the local school. We would also like to thank the young adult with autism spectrum disorder who helped design the virtual world and who provided input into aspects of the project methods. Thanks also go to Heather Dilks and Sahil Suleman, who contributed to this project as part of their undergraduate degree.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was conducted without any external funding.